A day at the seaside in 2011

I live on an island in the tropics and yesterday I did a casual walk on the beach and my island is really famous for its white beaches and blue lagoons. After 10 months I got to enjoy the beauty of a specific beach in the west coast of the island, called Flic-en-Flac. So, me and my cousin-brother decided to do something we loved to do when we were kids and that is shell gathering. We walked like 2 kms, eyeing the sand and the shallow waters only to see that shells were almost absent. And that was kind of like a shock for me because like 15 years ago only or more, this very beach was 'too' full of them. All kinds of shells, just name it. So, condensing everything in a nut, we found just a handful of 'presentable' shells since i noticed there were some which were deformed meaning that they were diseased when they were still alive, yeah, shells are once alive before they become immobile. (The term seashell usually refers to the exoskeleton of an invertebrate (an animal without a backbone). A seashell or sea shell, also known simply as a shell, is a hard, protective outer layer created by an animal that lives in the sea. The shell is part of the body of the animal.) And the only disease i could think of, as a medical doctor to be, is cancer. Believe it or not. And there is a specific shell, which was in abundance when I was still a kid, was totally absent 0_0 and that was a very nasty surprise. Only two reasons can explain this and they are 1) All of them died due to toxic atmosphere of the present sea 2) Kind of related to the first reason, the shell residents decided to migrate elsewhere because of the unpleasant atmosphere of the current sector. Now I am just wandering what might happen in the next 10 years when pollution will be ruling in the sea. On that day, we went with only one plastic bag for the shells and we came back with 3 plastic bags. Since people were generous enough to have thrown their thrash in the sea after enjoying what is 'public property'. Not only that, I saw clothes floating, unattended, broken glass bottles on the beach where people are supposed to walk and to my surprise, i even saw a toothpaste tube, half buried in the sand. At that time I told my cousin brother, "see, if a homeless person would have come, he would have got a towel to dry himself after swimming, a pair of trousers and a t shirt. He could have used the toothpaste to brush his teeth. And bottles where he could have stored his water". Summering everything, I just want to point out that the sea is dying. And if such is the case in a developing country like my island, i just wonder what is happening in the so called First World countries...well God knows best. I just ask everyone to care for what has been given to us for free. Because once it will be taken from us, we'll be the only losers. God bless you all :)